Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (2000)
By Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck

Synopsis: This book is basically the mission statement for New Urbanism, and is "a primer on how design can help us untangle the mess we have made and once again build and inhabit places worth caring about" (xiv). It's also a "study of two different models of urban growth: the traditional neighborhood and suburban sprawl" (3). This book is a plan for how to create good human environments, and provides an overview of the various problems of sprawl - how they were created by federal funding, how they are maintained, what sprawl looks like, and why it is bad. All of this is intermixed with elements of traditional neighborhood development in order to show a solution to the problem. The tone is definitely defensive, yet they do a good job of defending New Urbanism against critics who mock the "traditional" design. The authors basically say hey, that's what people want, and we have bigger concerns to be thinking about. Authors state that sprawl consists of 1) housing subdivisions, 2) shopping centers, 3) office parks, 4) civic institutions, 5) roadways. The problem is that sprawl separates and isolates all our vital functions, thus this book is an attempt to bring back a sense of holism. We have become fragmented and can combat this via design. The authors propose six rules of Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND): 1) 5-minute walk from edge to cente, 2) a center, 3) good street networks, 4) narrow, versatile streets, 5) mixed-use, 6) special sites for special buildings. The problem is that traditional suburbia lacks choice. We shouldn't let mistaken impulses/design of Modernist architectural solutions prevent us today from designing places to better help society. They say: "experiment on the rich, who can always move out" (53).

Interacts With:

Building Suburbia, Edge City (and Garreau claims edge cities are a way of re-integrating functions, but I'm not totally convinced), The Modern Urban Landscape
Hmm, this could be seen as yet another antidote to the fragmentation/alienation of modernity, as authors claim New Urbanism will bring a sense of re-unification and holism.

The Social Meaning of Civic Space: Studying Political Authority Through Architecture

The Social Meaning of Civic Space: Studying Political Authority Through Architecture (1988)
By Charles T. Goodsell

Synopsis: This book is a study of the design of city-council chambers from 1865-1980s, and investigates the way changing design styles reflect changing political ideas. The author examined 75 council chambers in the U.S. and Canada, and immersed himself in the surroundings, noting details, design, layout, and the overall aura of the chambers. He breaks his observations into three categories of analysis: 1) composition of space, 2) design of semi-fixed features, 3) patterns of decoration and object display. Chapter II provides an amazing synthesis of various useful theories for studying interior space from the realms of sociology, anthropology, history, architecture, linguistics and semiotics, art history, psychology, and environmental psychology. The author identifies three major design periods: Traditional, 1865-1920 (large, boxy space and strict separation of officials and spectators - sense of imposed authority), Midcentury, 1920-1960 (smaller, longer and lower, increased sense of checks and balances, more informal "confronted architecture"), Contemporary, 1960-1980s (rounded floor plan and amphitheatre seating, curved surfaces, increased sense of joined/shared authority). These design changes express our changing notions of public authority. Goodsell sees civic space as ceremonial space, as a space of ritual made special by the use of certain symbols. He reads architecture in a holistic rather than linear way, and thus has lots of interesting things to say about perception. This is a potentially very useful book [see full notes for details].

Interacts With:

This is one of my favorite books, and got me all inspired and stuff again. Has an amazing bibliography, and seems like a great book to follow, methodologically - esp. for researching meaning of interior spaces.
Also, this book stands out because it is one of the few on this list to emphasize an increasing coming together/holism as opposed to an increased fragmentation - it's refreshing!
Semiotics
Learning From Las Vegas, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Delirious New York, Variations on a Theme Park (all these books say very different thing, it's just that they view the built environment as creating a sort of aura or possibility).

Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies

Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971)
By Reyner Banham

Synopsis: Banham aims to "present the architecture...within a topographical and historical context of the total artifact that constitutes Great Los Angeles, because it is this double context that binds the polymorphous architectures into a comprehensive unity that cannot often be discerned by comparing monument with monument out of context" (23). Book is broken down into "four ecologies:" Ecology I: Surfurbia (beaches as biggest thing to envy; focus on indoor/outdoor living; spanish colonial revival; freeways); Ecology II: Foothills (fancy suburbs; mobility-focused architecture; landscape of "do your own thing;" city obsessed with transportation); Ecology III: The Plains of Id (flatlands as "heartland;" Schindler, Neutra, and the International Style ; plain cubes; people should accept the non-existent downtown for what it is: dead); Ecology IV: Autopia (freeway as central feature; L.A. as embodiment of bourgeois good life of urban homestead; people unfairly castigate L.A. when they should examine all the fabulous architecture there and think about why L.A. has inspired so much of that). Argues that "the language of design, architecture and urbanism is Los Angeles is the language of movement" (23). Southern California is an ecological wonder and the land of "perpetual spring." People are too hard on L.A., and should not fault it for being different; it really embodies many ingrained American values - especially the desire for freedom of movement.

Interesting Specifics:

L.A. architecture is emblematic of that particular American phenomenon:"...the convulsions in building style that follow when traditional cultural and social restraints have been overthrown and replaced by the preferences of a mobile, affluent, consumer-oriented society, in which 'cultural values' and ancient symbols are handled primarily as methods of claiming or establishing status" (124).

"...Los Angeles is...the home of the most extravagant myths of private gratification and self-realization, institutionalized now in the doctrine of 'doing your own thing'" (124).

L.A. is steeped in the "fantasy of innocence" (129).

"So recreational living tends to become another synonym for the social 'turf' system of closed communities; systematic planning remains the creation of privileged enclaves" (145).

Anyone who cares about architecture simply cannot ignore Los Angeles - and to do so would be a huge and elitist blunder.

Interacts With:

This is really an L.A. apologist book. Says hey, it's not so bad, it's just different - you have to look at all its different parts to understand it.

City of Quartz, Variations on a Theme Park, Neon Metropolis, Country of Exiles (these are all negative takes on L.A. and L.A.-ish phenom, though Mike Davis straddles line between pos and neg); Holyland (not on any list), Learning from Las Vegas (for a positive attempt to understand car-centric landscapes), Golden State, Golden Youth

The Mezzanine

The Mezzanine (1986)
by Nicholson Baker

Synopsis: This is the only novel on my list! It's about the superficial and symbol-laden materiality of modern life. The story follows a man as he journeys on the escalator up to his office on the mezzanine. It's composed entirely of his random and in-depth observations of the most minute details of everyday social rituals and material culture, and is punctuated by footnotes which elaborately expand on i.e. the mechanics and materials of drinking straws. Book often links material details to nostalgic memories and childhood; adulthood, nostalgia, and memory are recurrent themes. The book is obsessed with materiality - with the texture, look, and feel of things, especially paper vs. plastic, and various containers of all sorts. The most microscopic details are discussed and pondered upon in depth, giving a portrait of the "weightlessness" of modern culture and the way we've been forced to sublimate all sense of purpose and meaning onto the ridiculous aesthetic and material conditions that intrude on us in every moment. His descriptions are detailed and witty and sometimes hilarious, and although its style is more "postmodern," it's really about the banality of modernity, as machines and technology and artificiality figure prominently.

Interesting Specifics:

Good example of the narcissism of small details; collection of "microhistories."

"Why do these images have to age before we can be fond of them?" (78). This is a common theme - the importance of distance and nostalgia in producing a sense of fondness or importance.

Concerned with microscopic instances of the "renewal of newness" - like the appearance of another plastic cup when you pull one from the dispenser.

Paper is the nostalgic favorite over plastic.

Interacts With:

Material culture books, Meaning of Things,
No Place of Grace (as connected to the antimodern quest for personal fulfillment, and the banality of an existence focused on minutiae).
de Certeau (focus on the minute details of everyday life)
Monochrome Memories
Flight Maps, American Plastic (idea that plastic represents the fake)

Design in the U.S.A.

Design in the U.S.A. (2005)
By Jeffrey L. Meikle

Synopsis: "The purpose of this book is to trace the history of design in the U.S. as a functional tool, as an economic force, and as the expression of a consumer culture that continues to transform everyday life" (17). It traces the history of U.S. design from 1790-present, and is divided into five sections: 1) The Emergence of the American System, 1790-1860 (increased urbanization at the end of this period; Americans had democratic passion for physical comforts that influenced design; 1853 NY Exhibition showed fanciness that would soon be available to the middle class too); 2) Art and Industry in the Gilded Age, 1860-1918 (rise of visual appearance over touch-based production; increased focus on taste and personal expression; aesthetic vs. moral views of design; Arts and Crafts Movement, 1880s - ); 3) Designing the Machine Age, 1918-1940 (birth of the industrial design profession in 1930s; rise of streamlining = desire for a less complex world; increased mobility and efficiency); 4) High Design vs. Popular Styling, 1940-1965 (rise of functionalism; rise of populuxe; shift from material to immaterial existence); 5) Into the Millennium: Moving Beyond Modernism (fracturing of any single design vision; playful mixing of postmodern style; information age as extension of modernity). Most interesting argument (as this book is more of a survey as opposed to an argument-driven book) is that the increased malleability of everything in the information age (today) and the increased catering to a multitude of subcultures marks the dissolution of the "modernist vision of rational, universal coherence" (210). American design is largely about the massive proliferation of stuff.

Interesting Specifics:

"...The democratic pursuit of happiness was related to an increasing flow of material goods - all of them products of design" (12).

It is said that design imposes order - but whose order, and for what purposes? (15-16)

Catherine Beecher = 1800-78

Transcontinental Railroad Completed = 1869

Model T Ford = 1908

Frederick Taylor = 1856-1915

Ford shuts down River Rouge plant in 1927.

Fiestaware = 1930s

Journal Industrial Design launched in 1954.

1960s = shift from a material to immaterial world (information age - isnt' this also when "postmodernism" began?)

Defines what it means to be a consumer: "how to invest time and energy in shopping, how to gain emotional release by acquiring material things, and how to construct and express personal identity by arranging and displaying possessions" (52).

"Visual appearance...assumed greater economic and cultural significance, as a 'touch-oriented, local world of production' yielded to a 'sight-oriented, broader world of consumption'" (52).

There were two schools of British design philosophy - the aesthetic and the moral - "one advocating design as a source of visual and tactile pleasure, the other as a source of moral reform" (67).

Tiffany lamp craze was in the 1900s.

Arts and Crafts Movement big in 1880s-1900s.

Stickley started making mission style furniture in 1902.

Industrial design profession emerged in the 1930s.

Streamlining "represented a common assumption that society's larger processes had to be rendered smoother, less complex, more frictionless in operation" (125). Also, "its rounded, enclosing forms, particularly when applied to architecture, suggested a need for protection and stability" (125).

Ford Taurus as radical design breakthrough, and car historians regard it as "'the single most important American production design of the 1980s'" (191).

Says Learning from Las Vegas (1972) launched the postmodern movement (192). [Hmm, don't others say it was a little earlier? Maybe it's that these guys were the first to really defend it and make it a "taste of the people" movement to embrace - ]

Grid was the first laptop.

Interacts With:

Rudeness and Civility, Class (any book that deals with middle class obsession with comfort)
Meaning of Things
Land of Desire (focus on the rise of the visual)
Did consumer culture kill Modernism?

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future (1984)
By Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan

Synopsis: This book examines past American visions of the future in order to show how those visions shed light on the values of their times; sees future visions as cultural artifacts. This is a coffee-table type book that sprang from a Smithsonian exhibit, and includes chapters on 1) Finding the Future (beginning with late 19th century - explores science fiction and utopian fiction, pulp magazines, futurism as linked to commodities, the rise of sci-fi tv and film); 2) The Community of Tomorrow (Progressive vision, "white city," City Beautiful, Garden City, 1939 World's Fair, FLW, Greenbelt Cities, Buckminster Fuller[city of the future as requiring blank slate]); 3) The Home of Tomorrow (rise of apartment homes yet obsession with futuristic single family homes, the rising appeal of mass-produced housing, streamlined style, high-tech kitchens); 4) Transportation of Tomorrow (rise of transportation innovation from 1880-1905, cars and planes, hopes and fears of nuclear power); 5) Weapons and Warfare of Tomorrow (WWI = weapons and electricity, 1920-30s = airplanes and war, WWII = massively destructive potential of weaponry). Authors argue that the future in the U.S. has increasingly moved from communitarian/spiritual utopias of the early days, to a "secular city of the capitalist future" in which most of the emphasis fell on the look of the future rather than the social plan. Argues also that American have long held a strong belief in "technological utopianism" - that "material means can ameliorate social problems and even perfect society" (xii). "The belief that machines, not politics, produce beneficial social change diverts people from initiating reforms that would truly distinguish the future from the present or the past" (xiii).

Interesting Specifics:

Utopian fiction was hugely popular in U.S. from 1880-90s.

We generally look at the future in terms of commodities (11).

1929 = Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House.

1938 = Orson Wells' War of the Worlds radio show.

1952 = First Hydrogen Bomb

1957 = First nuclear power plant in the U.S.; Shippingport, PA.

Interacts With:

Maybe other books about World's Fairs or different vision of the future.
David Wojcik
Rem Koolhaas (for the different proposals for future cities).

Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design In America

Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design In America (1993)
by Terry Smith

Synopsis: Smith asks: "Is there an iconography of modernity?" In investigating this, Smith explores the interconnecting forces that produced this iconography in the 1920-30s in the U.S. He states: "I explore the emergence, shaping, transformation, and then normalization of this visual order in a series of connected case studies, anything from the first Ford Motor Company plant at Highland Park, Detroit, commenced in 1910, to the New York World's Fair of 1939-40" (2). The book is divided into 4 parts: Part 1: The Modernization of Work: Detroit, 1910-1929 (River Rouge Plant and the rise of managerial observation; mass production functionalism and its influence on design; Charles Sheeler's art=functionalism can be beautiful); Part 2: Modernization and National Dissensus: Imagery of Reality in the 1930s (modernism became the style of the new corporatism; Diego Rivera's murals as depicting human side of industrial order; Frida Kahlo and gender imagery; FSA photos and the rise of "visualizing the people;" rural decline as flip-side of modernity); Part 3: Design or Revolution? Styling Modernity in the 1930s (androgynous "streamlined" shape; industrial designs hearkening a "usable future;" NY MOMA and NY World's Fair; Part 4: The Modern Effect )Modernity normalized and domesticated by 1940s, lost utopian bent due to horrors of various WWII realities). Argument is that modernity is all about severing ties with the past and creating something new. The modernist style is ultimately a triumph of corporate capitalism and the assembly-line aesthetic, and this whole thing demonstrates the interconnection of industry, New Deal agencies, art, and design. The role of visual imagery in the so-called Second Industrial Revolution ultimately "altered the way Americans saw themselves, saw others, and were seen by others" (2).

Interesting Specifics:

The 1920s-30s were especially concerned with the symbolic, and if fact many people were annoyed by modernity's "excesses, its sensationalized violence, its oversignification" (322).

Six images constantly occurred at this time: "industry and workers, cities and crowds, products and consumers" (7).

The huge River Rouge plant in Detroit was developed between 1915-25.

"Functionalism is essential to modernity" (72).

"Streamlining" was industrial design's biggest contribution, and the egg-like smooth shapes created an imagery of vague androgyny (380). [Interesting, but wasn't "modernity" all about the masculine, and the dispelling of the female? Maybe this was a way to bring the female back - after the rise of the skyscraper - in a subtle way].

Modernity lost a lot of its utopian value after WWII, probably due to the rising belief that machines would be bad too (i.e. connection between social planning and Nazism).

Modernism as triumph of corporate capitalism.

Mass production demanded an imagery which would be reflected in buildings too; it got this in post-Art Deco Moderne (92).

1914 = Ford introduces his $5 a day wages plan (idea being that workers could then buy more Ford stuff).

Model A = 1927.

Charles Sheeler was a famous photographer and painter of new industrial plants and modernist landscapes. He did much to open up the public eye to the beauty of functionalism and the idea that industrial order could be beautiful.

Photography was the dominant visual form of the 1930s.

Interacts With:
Twentieth Century Limited,

Building Suburbia: Green Fields And Urban Growth, 1820-2000

Building Suburbia: Green Fields And Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (2003)
By Dolores Hayden

Synopsis: This book is a history of suburban development from 1820-2000, with the theme that the suburbs represent the triple dream of "house plus land [nature] plus community" (8). The book looks at what she deems to be seven historic patterns of suburban neighborhood: 1) Borderlands (1820s - ; picturesque style ala Andrew Jackson Downing with a focus on landscape and lots of plants, flowers; Catherine Beecher and the idealization of women's sphere and sacred domesticity); 2) Picturesque Enclaves (1850s - ; "were the most important secular manifestations of a wider communitarian movement whose adherents believed that building a model community in a natural setting led the reform of society" (45); Llewellyn Park, NJ (1857), Riverside, IL (1869, but Frederick Law Olmstead); 3) Streetcar Buildouts (1870s-1910s; followed transport lines yet still close to center; big push for homeownership); 4) Mail-Order and Self-Built Suburbs (1910-; rise of pre-cut catalogue houses ala Sears; increased zoning and planning; federal involvement in the 1930s); 5) Sitcom Suburbs (1940s - ; FHA loans; racism and sexism; Levittown and Lakewood; cult of consumption and domesticity); 6) Edge Nodes (1950s - ; rise of strip malls and car-centric living; Interstate Highway Act; rise of malls; Title VII New Towns like Columbia, MD; chain stores and big boxes; 7) Rural Fringes (rise of telecommuting and the dispersal of homes; rise of "valhallas" - fancy nature-infused spots). Ends with a brief discussion of nostalgia and futurism as embodied by Seaside and Celebration (nostalgia), and "smart houses" and digital houses (futurism) in which technology will play an even bigger role. We should value older suburbs as well, and the search for more democratic forms in the future will be political.

Interacts With:
The Celebration Chronicles, The Modern Urban Landscape, Brave New Neighborhoods, Behind the Gates,
Is a very straightforward and non-political survey of suburban history in the same spirit as Relph's Modern Urban Landscape. Hayden of course does have a little bit of preservationist's bent, esp. at the end.

The Modern Urban Landscape

The Modern Urban Landscape (1987)
By Edward Relph

Synopsis: The purpose of this book is "to give an account of the development of the appearance of cities over the last 100 years in order to explain how they have come to look as they do" (2). Hence, the focus of his book is on appearance. Four factors account for the look of twentieth-century cities: 1) architecture, 2) technological innovations, 3) planning, and 4) social developments (7). Begins by detailing the rise of electricity and new technologies in the late 19th-century and the utopian hopes they inspired; moves to various planning movements such as the City Beautiful Movement and Garden City Movement, and the rise of planning and zoning which led cities to be seen as "efficient factories;" the First Machine Age (1900-40s) and the impact of the car on the landscape; Modernism and the International Style (1920s); the Second Machine Age (1940s-50s) and the rise of nuclear imagery; the rise of postwar planning which sought the separation of functions; corporatization/commodification of cities via themed spaces, etc.; late-Modernist glass boxes; the rise of postmodern architecture and urban design. This book is not argument-driven, but rather is explanatory. A simple overview of basic urban design.

Interacts With:
Is ultra-mild, non-Marxist. More explanatory than anything else.
For a more politicized take on some aspects, see:
Landscapes of Power, Brave New Neighborhoods
Building Suburbia